


kiss me once, kiss me twice (it's been a long, long time)

by WinnieTherPooh



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Reunions, Separations, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 16:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20118289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinnieTherPooh/pseuds/WinnieTherPooh
Summary: Three different times where Jemma Simmons kissed Leo Fitz (but only once where they both knew what it meant).Your classic "oh crap, I'm in love with my best friend" with a side of wartime angst.





	kiss me once, kiss me twice (it's been a long, long time)

**Oxford, 1939**

Their first kiss wasn’t anything special when they really looked back at it. They were both 17, awkward and uncomfortable, finishing up a marathon study session that had probably impacted both of their brains more than they cared to admit. There had been a few awkward class periods after that, lectures where Fitz dropped his head and avoided eye contact, and encounters in the dining hall when Jemma suddenly changed directions to prevent a conversation.

After a week, however, they were back in their old routines. It just didn’t make sense for them to be let the kiss come between them. They were the youngest members of their class, thrown together by both their age and the way their personalities fit together, each completing a part of the other that they didn’t even know had been missing. 

Jemma wanted to be a doctor, Fitz had his eyes to the sky, where he was dreaming of creating a flying machine unlike any other. 

“I’m calling it the Zephyr,” he told her. She was perched on his desk, and he was sitting cross legged on his bed, flipping through his graph notebook- his private one, that is. He barely let her touch it, and would show her his designs from a safe distance. “I had this idea for reflective technology, that could work as a kind of mimic of the sky. That way, the Zephyr could be almost invisible.”

“No way.” Jemma glanced at the door when she heard floorboards squeak in the hall. Technically speaking, she shouldn’t have been here. The rules at Oxford preferred them to study in the library, but she had found ways to avoid getting detected in her visits to his room. After all, except for the one kiss on that late night, they had never even thought of each other that way. 

“I’m serious. It’ll take a little longer for me to be able to work out the details, but I think I’m going to present it when I go for my doctorate. I just have to figure out a way to test it.” Fitz’s eyes had lit up in the way they only did when he talked about engineering and planes. His curly hair was sticking up as he waved his hands around, explaining the minute details of his Zephyr. 

Antoine, Fitz’s roommate, slipped into the room. “Fitz, you’re going to have to keep it down. The whole hall will think you’re crazy.” He nodded to Jemma. “Hey, girl.”

Fitz’s eyes darkened for a second. “They already think I’m crazy.”

“I’m just saying you don’t want the director coming in here and busting you and Jems.” Trip slung his book bag to his bed. “Speaking of, you’re going to want to get out of here if you want to make curfew.”

Jemma looked at her watch and jumped off the desk. “You’re right. I’ll see you later, Fitz.” 

Trip watched her leave before turning to Fitz. “You know, you should say something. She’s not going to be here for you forever if you don’t.” 

Fitz glared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.” Trip laughed lightly. “If it bothers you that I’m flirting with her, I can stop.”

“She’s just my friend, and I don’t want her to be uncomfortable here.” Fitz was suddenly aware of just how angry Trip’s flirting made him. 

“Whatever you say, pal.” 

“And besides, we’re only 17. We’ll have at least 3 more years together before we have to do anything.” Fitz was talking more to himself at this point. Jemma had already mentioned Milton, that lab partner of hers, more than he liked. But it would be all right. They had all the time in the world to figure each other out.

**London, 1942**

“Jemma? Listen, it’s Fitz. I’m in London, but I’m leaving tomorrow. Can’t say where, of course, but I have to see you before I go.” Fitz’s voice was urgent, rushed. “Can you meet me at the train station at 3:00?”

“3:00. I’ll be there.” Jemma felt numb as she hung up the phone in her landlady’s kitchen. She had known that he would be leaving for the front again soon, but not this soon. She had hoped that he could have stayed through Christmas, and maybe she could have gone to Glasgow to finally meet his mum. Logically, of course, she should have expected it, but logic was poor preparation for the actual adrenaline of realizing that Fitz was going to be on the front lines, flying an actual plane, in actual danger of being nothing more than an explosion in the sky or a twisted body on the ground instead of her brilliant, funny, loyal best friend. Why hadn’t he stayed in the lab with her, or better yet, stayed 17 forever? 

Jemma forced herself to take a deep breath and reevaluate the situation. Fitz was going back to France. He had survived before, and he would do it again. This would be no different than any of their other goodbyes. 

Except, with their other goodbyes, she hadn’t felt quite like this. She couldn’t name exactly what it was, the nagging feeling that was eating away at her. It was fear, she decided, fear for her best friend and for his safety.

It was too noisy on the platform- too loud and full of other people going places and saying goodbyes. She couldn’t possibly say a proper goodbye to Fitz in the middle of this noise.

But there he was, smiling at her with his arms open wide for a hug. 

“I can’t believe you’re leaving so soon. I thought I’d at least get a dinner with you.” Jemma teased, after she had embraced him. 

“Well, you know how it is. You have your top secret work keeping you busy, and I have mine.” His RAF uniform looked exceptionally good, Jemma thought. That was, of course, just an objective statement. It had nothing to do with Fitz wearing it. 

“Right, right. You’re going to stay safe out there, aren’t you?” Jemma looked up at him, and saw fear in his eyes for the first time. “Fitz?”

“I don’t know.” He admitted, taking her hand. “This mission- it’s different than the others. We’re not allowed to tell anybody about it- hell, I wasn’t even supposed to see you.” The train whistle blew and Jemma realized with a sinking heart that they were already running out of time. “I had to sneak this time away, because I had to say goodbye.”

“Fitz, don’t-”

“Hear me out, Jemma. I need you to know this.”

“Fitz, stop. You’re my best friend in the world, I won’t have you talking about dying like this.”

“Yeah. But you’re more than that, Jemma, and I should have told you a long time ago. I was scared, I guess, but I realized that I’m even more scared of dying without telling you how much I love you.” Fitz’s eyes had starry tears in them. “And these 3 years have been the happiest of my life, just being friends with you. You don’t have to say anything now, and I know there’s Milton and Will and probably many others, because you’re the best, most fantastic person in the world, but you’re everything to me and I couldn’t run the risk of dying without telling you.” 

Jemma was frozen, flabbergasted by the enormity of what he was saying. And then, all of a sudden, she was kissing him and he was kissing her, all the words he had been trying to say caught up into one perfect moment- a proper first kiss, not like that Oxford mess from three years before. 

Then he was gone, and she was left with the taste of Fitz on her lips and the word for how she had felt earlier stamped onto her heart. Love, of course.

**Sheffield, 1945**

Jemma was moving to New York the next week, off on a SSR assignment to work with Agent Peggy Carter herself on the serum she had been developing during the war. Her mother thought she was crazy, and had been more than happy to tell her that in the weeks following her decision. 

“Jemma, you won’t know anybody. You’ll be all by yourself.”

“I’ll make friends. I’ll be working in a lab, and at least there I won’t have to deal with trying to find a place in academia here. I’ve already been offered the spot.” Jemma was packing her personal items now, for the bag she would carry with her. Everything else was being boxed up to ship separately. 

“But what about your future, darling?” Her mother sat on the edge of her bed, playing with the stuffed monkey she kept on her pillow. “You don’t want to marry an _ American _ do you?”

“Mum! That’s not why I’m going.” Inside, Jemma’s heart ached. She wasn’t planning on marrying anybody, truth be told. Her heart was broken into pieces and tied up with one of her old ribbons, right there alongside Fitz’s letters: the notes he had written her for her birthday at Oxford, and the dozens of letters that he had sent to her before the telegram. She had saved that, to, as if in some morbid way it would keep her hope alive. 

“What’s that sweater, Jemma?” Her mother stood up and was looking at the open crate on the floor, with Fitz’s grey cardigan folded around the sketchbook on the top. “I haven’t seen it before.”

Damn. Why must her mother be so nosy? “It belongs to a friend.” Jemma snatched it away quickly, but the sketchbook fell to the floor with a bang.

“A friend?” Her mother stooped to collect the scattered pages. “Who is this Leopold Fitz?” 

Jemma sank to her knees on the floor. “He-” Her voice caught in her throat. “I went to school with him, before the war.”

Her mother, blessedly, put it together without her having to explain it all out loud- the last kiss in the London train station, the long months without letters, the final letter from his mum with the telegram enclosed and those tragic words emblazoned on her soul: “missing, presumed dead.”

“Oh, my dear. I’m so sorry.” Her mother had never hugged her quite like this before, and all of a sudden she was crying, her tears falling in burning drops onto Fitz’s careful plans for the Zephyr and for all the planes he would never build. “Is that why you went to Scotland last month?”

Jemma nodded. “I had to see his mother. She offered me his sketches, something to remember him by.”

“Is there any chance that he could still be alive?” Her mother, she remembered, had lived through a war of her own. 

Jemma shrugged. “The war ended almost 2 months ago, and there hasn’t been any word. He’s gone, mum.” 

That afternoon, she volunteered to walk to the store for her mother. She needed the air and the exercise after the crushing sadness of the morning- and of every morning, ever since she had heard the news. 

A train had just left the station, its deposit of passengers slowly trickling away from the platform as she walked past it. A man in uniform was greeting his family, swinging his daughter in the air, while another had his arms around a girl probably her age- perhaps his wife? Yet another was looking at the map in genuine confusion- he was alone. Had his family forgotten what time he was coming home? What kind of welcome could that be? The closer she looked, the more familiar he seemed. There was something in the way he stood that reminded her of-

Jemma looked away. There was no use in imagining now. It was just the train station blurring her senses, reminding her of memories that she should be putting behind her. 

And yet-

She couldn’t help herself and looked again. The soldier had left the map and was at the bottom of the stairs now, looking left and right in abject confusion. The least she could do was help him. Jemma sighed and was beginning to walk towards him again when they made eye contact. 

He gaped, his eyebrows contracting, before his eyes lit up with the same wonder and excitement she remembered when he talked about the Zephyr. “Jemma?”  
“Fitz!” He had dropped his rucksack and she was running towards him and he was limping closer to her. 

Neither of them had a care in the world, not of Mrs. Jones and her disapproving stare or the gossip that was sure to reach her mother before she had even gotten home. The only thing that mattered now was Fitz, Fitz, Fitz: her hands in his too-short hair, his lips touching her like he was starving, his own hands shaking as they cradled her head, knocking her hat to the ground as he kissed her again and again, the tears on both of their cheeks as they pulled away from each other to really see their faces.

“I thought I had lost you.” Jemma spoke first, searching his face, trying to memorize every detail in case this dream was going to disappear. “It’s been so long.”

“I thought I would never make it back.” Fitz pulled her into his chest. “It’s been a long, long two years.”

“They told us you were dead.” Jemma corrected herself almost immediately, “Missing, but presumed dead. I didn’t want to give up, but oh, Fitz, it’s been so long.”

“My plane got shot down on a spy mission. I’ve spent the past few years-well, never mind that now.” Fitz kissed the top of her head again. “I’m here now, and I’m not going to leave your side, if you’ll let me stay.”

Jemma smiled up at him, knowing that he could read the years of longing and hoping in her eyes just like she could read the suffering and pain and love in his. “Let you? I’m never letting you go again.”  



End file.
